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Category Archives: Egypt 2011

Tomorrow I’m going to wear my ankh necklace, in the honor of the people of Egypt. I’m going to wear it, even though I often get mistaken for a Christian when I wear it (because it looks like a cross, even though it is covered in heiroglyphs).

Like everyone else, I am watching and hoping for the people of Egypt. I have old friends there, sisters, and I wonder if they have joined the protests. I wonder what they think. I wonder what their father, who lives here in the U.S, is thinking.

Now, this will all end in one of three ways:

1. Mubarak will ultimately step down and be replaced by someone, perhaps al-Baradei, who will slowly transition Egypt into a democratic state.

2. Mubarak will ultimately step down and be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, in which case, Egypt will transition into a theocracy reminiscent of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979.

3. Mubarak will hold on, ultimately crush the protests, and things will go back to the way they were.

One quick caveat I would like to add: everyone seems to love theorizing on how the outcome of Egypt will affect Israel. I’ve heard people say that if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, they will revoke the peace treaty, and we will return to a permanent state of war.

Here’s my problem with that: though it is possible, and maybe even probable, the millions of dollars that Egypt receives in aid money from the United States (second only to the amount that Israel receives) was contingent on that peace treaty. Sadat held it up as the compromise that he was willing to make in order to get that aid money.

Should the Muslim Brotherhood take over, Egypt would likely lose that aid. Given that one of the central issues for the current protesters is the lack of jobs and thus, decent lives, I think that the loss of that aid will be a hard sell to the Egyptian public…